


JL-6474 Clothes Company 77

by HSavinien



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Building community, Child Soldiers, Escape, Experimentation, Fiber Arts, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Original Character, Pre-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reformed Stormtroopers (Star Wars), Stormtrooper Rebellion (Star Wars), Team as Family, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: Jannah's former First Order stormtroopers have to survive Kef Bir somehow, and while the salvage they pull from the ocean is helpful, it's not enough. This is how they do it, from one trooper who really, really cares about clothing. (In which I put WAY MORE THOUGHT into Star Wars worldbuilding than Disney ever did.)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9





	JL-6474 Clothes Company 77

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my brothers for beta-reading!

JL-6474 flinches every time one of her squadmates says "Dats" out loud, every time for months. It's hard to remember that they have names now, not designations, and nobody gets punishment detail for using unauthorized nicknames or answering to them. Jannah is the best at remembering and gentle when she reminds Dats that Geedi isn't TZ-5583 anymore. It starts getting easier as they repurpose and change their uniforms until everybody looks different from each other. Jannah and Palol and a couple of the others grow their hair out long, longer than even officers can in regs. Dats tries that too, but it feels wrong, much worse than changing her uniform had - that she hadn't minded, it was good to be able to take it apart and piece it back together so it didn't chafe at the small of her back.

She fixes rips and patches holes for a few other squaddies, then starts figuring out how to make things from scratch, using whoever will stand still as practice. Most of them haven't hit their full growth yet, so uniform pieces have to be taken apart to add space for lengthening limbs and broadening hips and shoulders. Jannah finds her some long sheets of kelp that dry semi-translucent but flowing, and Dats stitches them together to make wraps that protect against wind better than their uniform shirts. Forten and Teo figure out how to process animal hides from the non-sentients that live in the air and ocean. Teo brings her big yellow rolls of leather from the slow-moving creatures that seem to be mostly giant sieves - pulling nutrients in through gaping mouths and expelling their remains in a wash of blue excreta back into the waves.

She unravels threads and then twists them back together, working out how to make them stronger. Dats gets a cutter set up to slice long, even strips from the leather and kelp to supplement the thread. She sweeps what's left of the maintenance deck for needles and shears, and then again later for sharpeners and adhesives that won't eat her materials, clasps and closures. She soaks some of the threads and leather in water and colorant to find out what will stick. Colors are good, anything that isn't white and black. When they strip the ship of everything they can, Dats raises her hand and claims all the fabric materials that aren't necessary for shelter furnishings and Kester's med setup. It's more efficient to have one trooper focus on uniforms than everyone trying to do all the work of upkeep on their own. Dats shows whoever wants to learn how to do the easy parts and distributes things fairly for anyone who wants to do nonessential modifications. Some of them use pieces of their old armor for that. (Dats turns hers into a chair, using the stripped helmet and limb pieces as a support and the chest and backplate as seat and back.)

About a year in, when Forten gets attached to the orbaks, they suddenly need materials for that gear too, because Forten's right, they need to be able to travel farther, faster than they can at a march if they're going to run good scouting and foraging patrols. Forten laughs when she scowls at zir and complains about having to figure out how to fit materials to non-sentients. Ze helps, cooing at zir favorite big hairy gray beast and petting its face while Dats takes measurements. She jumps away when it snuffles at her hair and glares again at Forten until ze brings both zirself and the orbak back under control, hiding zir grin poorly under the mess of facial hair ze’s still in the process of growing out. 

After the saddle project is far enough along to hand over to the orbak riders for final tweaks, Dats turns to an overall camp need. It takes days of planning and sorting through cold weather gear, but she comes to a difficult conclusion. They need more, much more, by next season. 

Last year's solution isn't practical for the long term. They'd spent the cold months huddling together in the mess building, eating the last of their ration packs and sending sentries out in shifts to watch the sky for pursuit in the few sets of high thermal mass clothing they have. It was miserable and cramped and tedious; nobody wants to do that again. There are the orbaks to care for now too, which means that either they’ll have to shelter  _ with _ the beasts or Forten and Jackro and everyone else who cares for them will call claim on every piece of gear that isn’t taken up by sentries. Teo, used to being out hunting and scouting, can’t sit in one place for more than a couple of hours without vibrating himself almost into hyperspace, and Kester will have to tranq Palol and Trick again if they’re forced into close quarters for long periods. 

She has something to work with, at least. The TIE-jockeys had relinquished their gear first thing - Palol had to be talked out of throwing his into the ocean and still refuses to wear anything close-fitting - and she ripped out the monitors and trackers to take the durafiber to pieces. There's enough of that for seven sets of gear. Scrapping the cold-enviro armor yields enough for another thirteen. With the five sets of pre-made insulated scouting gear she can pull to pieces, she's still short. She can make up some of it with layering, but at most she'll be able to put together 27 outfits, maybe 29 if she fits the smallest Company members first. There are 40 of them. 

Palol took up as supply officer a few months ago, when they figured out that they needed someone central to keep track of things. She marches into the -fab building he claimed (and promptly knocked three of the sides out of, to bond large plates of transparisteel in their place) and shoves a datapad at him.

"We're going to run out of material. We need to either figure out how to fabricate or trade for more."

He looks her numbers over and raises his eyebrows. "Talk to Geedi about it. They found some good stuff to trade on the last scavenging trip out in the skiffs." 

Dats nods. Geedi doesn't talk out loud anymore; they were trained as comms and decided when the Company deserted that they were done with talking, but finding Geedi means finding Pingback too. Pingback is Geedi’s opposite and always at their side. He’s easy to locate. He talks all the time - to Geedi, to himself, to anyone else around - checking in and cheering them up, reminding them that they're people. Dats finds him personally difficult. It's hard to muster the energy to respond to all that sometimes.

The camp is laid out half as they'd been trained, orderly and efficient, and half in comfortable disorder. Mess, med, supply, and armory are all in a square around their training space. Engineering and materials processing setups are off to the sides out of the way. Sanitation and reclamation is farther back, with the garden behind it and the orbak stables behind that. The sentries are staged farther out, to watch for danger coming over land or sea or from above, so they’ll have time to evac if the First Order comes. They haven’t so far. Kef Bir is a nowhere place.

Dats shares bunkspace with Trey and Sasana. Their -fab is modded with red paint and the textured triangles that Sasana chipped out around the door with a knife. They're tucked in under the edge of a hill away from the rest of camp where it's quieter. The other twelve bunks are scattered around, some in clusters, some off out of the way like theirs. 

Geedi and Pingback are usually in Jayelle's engineering -fab if they're in camp. They switch back and forth between salvage and gardening, but they're always gearheads. When she pokes her head in, Jayelle has the newest version of Jannah's bow in pieces on her work surface and a laser cutter lined up on a sheet of metal that looks like it's marked for a new grip. 

"Geedi?"

Jayelle nods toward the back. Pingback's wide shoulders are curled over the tiller. Dats edges around, staying out of range of sparks from Jayelle's cutter. When she gets close enough, she spots Geedi's feet sticking out from under the tiller. Pingback braces a disk as Geedi bangs on it with a hammer. Pingback is talking, observations on the waves today and thoughts about crop rotation punctuated by the clanging of hammer on metal. 

Dats waits for a pause in the banging and says, "Geedi!"

Pingback breaks off his chatter and turns. "Dats!" He grins at her, all dimples and teeth. "How are you today? Want to bang on some metal for a while?"

Geedi slides out from under the tiller and looks up at her with a question in their eyes.

She frowns at Pingback, and refocuses on Geedi. "Can you earmark some of your salvage for trading for me? We're going to run short on material."

Geedi frowns, mouth and fingers ticking silently, probably counting through trade value and the other things the camp needs. Their face clears and they give her a nod.

"No problem," Pingback adds cheerfully. "Will you be going on the trade run yourself or sending a list?"

"Who's going?" She doesn't want to, but not everyone can be trusted to get the right things even with a list. She can list weight and material and size and color, but the way it falls and moves and the texture between her fingers or against her neck is harder to quantify.

"Gray and Trick," Pingback says. "We'll be up at the fields getting this tiller back into service."

Dats scowls. "I'll go." Gray and Trick are great at getting the best ration staples and making friends with the people they meet at the trading shelter. Neither of them could identify cloth that feels nice if someone was interrogating them. 

Geedi nods and signs  _ tomorrow _ and  _ oh-nine-point-five. _

"I'll be there. Thanks."

Dats spends the rest of the day trying to find anything else in camp that will be useful. They'll be hard-pressed to trade for enough material to make up the shortfall. 

Sasana's in the mess when Dats comes in, cutting fish protein into thin slices for drying. Her coat's discarded over the back of a seat and Dats picks it up, examining the leather absently for rips or strained seams. It's red with brown stitching, modded with a fluttery fringe of shed orbak hair around the collar. Dats pauses and looks at it.

"How warm is this?" she asks.

Sasana flicks a stray piece of fish skin off her cutting surface into a med bucket and looks up. "I don't know, pretty warm. Keeps the wind off my neck."

Dats rolls a few fibers between her fingers. They bind together a bit. "Thanks. That's… that's going to be helpful. I've got to go."

Sasana shrugs and gets back to work. 

Dats marches to the orbak stables and nearly knocks Forten down as ze rounds the corner. "I need all the shed hair you can get me."

"We've got sacks of it in the back," Forten says after a second to collect zirself. "What do you want it for?"

"Cold weather materials," Dats says, a smile finally cracking through her worry. 

She takes two sacks back to her work -fab and pulls out handfuls, carding through the orbak hair to pull out debris. It needs washing. There's dirt matting it into snarls and grease from the animal's skin, but it's thick and warm when she buries her fingers in it. 

The orbaks may end up clothing them better than the First Order had. 

By the next morning, Dats is bleary with sleep dep and grimy with grease and plant matter and flecks of dried excrement, but she's got a pile of lumpy, thick cord. She cleaned the fibers and rolled them against her leg and twisted them until they bound together, and the result isn’t pretty or fast, but it's the beginning of something that will  _ work. _

Dats has just enough time to wipe most of the grime off and snag a bite of food before she has to sprint to catch up to Gray and Trick at the edge of camp. The sledge behind their orbaks is stacked carefully with salvage from the battlestation wreck - durasteel and plating peeled off for use in building, wires stripped for the metal, extra power cells that the Company doesn’t need. They’re putting the last of the tack in order when she races up, panting. Dats nods a greeting and Trick waves.

“You look rough,” Gray says mildly, stroking the white orbak behind the ears. Gray’s mostly wearing leather, gray with circular scoring and green rubbed into the scores to stain them, which Dats will have to ask them about later; it’s a good technique and she hasn’t seen it before. Trick wears the same sort of rain-repelling cloak that Jayelle favors. It’s barely more than an oiled kelp sack with head and arm holes, with only a little bit of black material on her forearms showing where she used any of her old gear, and her short pale hair makes her look like some kind of edible fungus with a puffball on top.

Dats grins at both of them. “I’ll be fine. Just stop if I fall off the sledge.” She settles in on top of the load, spreading out to distribute her weight and anchor the lighter salvage pieces. Dats closes her eyes, tucks her chin into her own cloak, and falls asleep almost immediately, despite the jostling as Trick and Gray nudge their orbaks into motion.

It’s a few hours’ journey.

The trading shelter is only a roof and two walls set against the wind, but they learned early on that simplicity doesn’t mean unimportance. The other groups on this continent all pass through and will deal with them here when they might not other places. The shelter means fair dealing and peaceful resolution and everybody the Company has met so far respects that. It’s not busy yet. Three young adults from the Cerean clan family down the coast are chatting as they brush salt off their wheeled cart. Two tall Quor’sav unload a pile of cloudripper claws from a pack, then settle on the rail above their goods, feathers fluttering into calm smoothness. The Company has never identified any sentients native to Kef Bir, but people who want to stay out of the way wash up here sometimes. 

The only one that Dats has met before is the oldest Cerean - they’ve talked a few times, enough for Fa-Modo to tell Dats about the purges that the Empire enacted on Cerea, trying to destroy some of the bloodlines connected to the old Jedi. Her parents fled and came here to settle secretly. Then, twenty years later, the battle of Endor had dumped a quarter of a battlestation in the ocean and sent massive waves across their settlement. The Quor-sav will have a similar story. They all survive, like the Company, on the things they eke out from land and ocean on a world that nobody cares about.

More sentients filter in, usually in twos or threes or fours. Most Dats can identify by species, at least, and a few by name. Some of them set out tarps or tables to display their goods. The Company’s display is a large chunk of flat plating with salvage samples. Gray chats companionably with the people who stop to examine things, their hands flicking as they talk and show off the salvage. Trick makes quick forays to the other displays, carting over power cells and wire and returning with rations and med components. Dats stalks around on her own, looking over the goods on offer. A pair of Twi-lek warriors have furs, the Cereans have woven fibers, and a handful of short pale humans and Sullustans show her some elastex that's more like what she's been working with for the most part. Dats picks it all up, feels the weight and drape and texture of it against her hands and then her throat where her scars are still sensitive. The elastex won't insulate enough, but she trades for several of the bigger furs and some scraps, ten meters of the woven stuff, and the smallest of the Quor-sav's claws. 

She carts durasteel plates to the Twi-lek. The bigger one haggles over it, and it takes Dats three trips to find a piece that suits her. Dats nods to Fa-Modo and hands over copper and power cells to the Cereans. She knows them better and knows what they expect in the trade. After consultation with Gray, she offers a few pieces of metal bar the right width for the Quor-sav to easily grasp and waits patiently as they cluck to each other for a moment. The smaller, blue one nods their acceptance. Dats pins the last of her bounty into her cloak, then heads back to the sledge for the ride home. 

Gray has divested themself of most of the rest of durasteel to sentients looking for building materials or armor, but a few of the pieces that Jayelle modded into bowls and shovels have gone as well. They’ve collected a sack of dried grain, a pile of fungi (the tox-scanner blinking green next to them), some dried capsica that Sasana will be pleased about, and a single yellow sweet food pearl - one of the settlements with a working ship must have braved the carnivores of the Forest Moon. Trick’s pile has a dry-box of flour from the windmill, so the Company will get fresh baking again for a few weeks. A handful of Gamorreans and Chadra-Fan built the mill after escaping slavery on a Hutt pleasure cruiser that had gotten in the way of an old Imperial blockade, and they trade grain-processing and their own flour with everyone who can consume the results. She’s also found three kinds of nuts, a piece that they need for one of the water-purifiers, and med supplies - a tiny bit of precious bacta spray as well as disinfectant and antibacterial powders that Kester can mix with water for cleaning wounds and tools. She comes back to grab the last of the wire as Dats starts packing and dashes off, returning triumphantly a moment later with a small plastform box full of powder. 

She shoves it in Dats’ face. “Smell!”

Dats sniffs, then sighs. “Red-root.” They’ve plenty of salt through evaporation and Sasana drove the other squaddies in the mess to distraction with her experiments when she spent about three months determining which of the plants around their camp were both non-toxic and made food taste nice when added fresh, or dried, or stewed into it. Red-root only grows inland, more than three days’ travel by orbak, and is sparse enough that it’s hard to justify spending the time to get it. Trick had brought some back the first time she and Gray went trading and it’s Dats’ favorite flavoring for any kind of stewed protein - rich and spicy and thick when mixed with orbak milk.

Dats wraps that box carefully in one of the furs, and helps pack the rest of the sledge. Gray starts humming as they round up the orbaks from their placid grazing and hitch them to the front. Dats resumes her sprawl in the back, cuddling under another fur to gauge its insulating properties, while Trick and Gray mount up. Trick picks up the tune, starting in with the words as they head out towards the camp.

“No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
I won’t follow your banner or take your commands, no,  
I’ll run where there’s freedom to find.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
You say, ‘These are orders, now fire as I tell you!’  
I’ll lay down my weapons instead.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
You say, ‘This is treason, your punishment’s dire.”  
Your orders are nothing but shouting.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
You say that you made us, you crafted us soldiers,  
Created us tools for your warring.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
If I am a tool or a fist or a weapon,   
Then why does my will still rebel?

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
But I’m not a weapon, I won’t do your warring,  
I'm my own and I choose my own way.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
If I stand alone, then I stand as a person  
I’ll choose a path to make my own.

No, I won’t fight for honor and I won’t fight for glory,  
I won’t kill for Imperial order,  
I’ll lay down my weapons, my squadmates beside me,  
We all make the choice to defy you.

No, we don’t fight for honor and we don’t fight for glory,  
We’ll kill none for the First Order’s warring,  
We are not alone for we all chose together,  
We’re stealing back who we can be.” 

Dats alternates napping and waking to join in songs. Gray and Trick sing off and on, and talk about the orbaks and the fields and the new waste reclamation project that will hopefully work better than the camp’s first few attempts.

It's blowing up into a storm by the time they get back. Dats helps shove the trade goods under cover, then rub the orbaks dry with grass. Once Forten's crew is satisfied with the state of the beasts, Dats rolls the furs up tight, tucks her cloak around them, and dashes for the clothing -fab. She comes back for the woven stuff, and again for another two bags of orbak hair. 

Dats can't do anything with the new material tonight. She's still groggy despite the naps and her stomach is complaining, so she goes to the mess to fix the second part of that. 

Sasana feeds them with some of the nuts that Trick got, mixed into spicy raw greens and sausage, all of it sprinkled with just enough vinegar to taste. Dats eats slowly, portioning out each part of the food so that there will be some of all of it in every bite. To fill up the corners, there are little cakes of mashed tuber simmered in butter. It's nothing like they ate before and Dats is sometimes overwhelmingly thankful that she can eat it all. 

Not all of them can. Kester's stomach rejects anything with most grains in it. Jannah and about a quarter of the rest of the Company can't digest anything that has orbak milk in it unless it's been turned into butter first. Kester thought for a while that it was a defect in weaning them off all the suppressors and drugs that they'd been on, but it seems to be something genetic. 

She crunches the last of the nuts, letting the vinegar cut through the richness of the butter. There's sweet dried fustberries still, but Dats needs to sleep before she falls over. She surrenders her seat to Jannah, and hardly even has to think to stop herself saluting. 

Dats is stumbling by the time she makes it to her sleeping -fab, but she manages to kick her boots off before she tips into her bunk.

The next morning, she stops by the mess to pick up a few bars of protein, berries, and seeds pressed into easy carrying food and eats one on her way to the clothing -fab. She’s going to need energy. Dats sits in the middle of the floor surrounded by piles of soft materials, and focuses on the woven stuff and the orbak hair she cleaned earlier. The fibers aren’t dissimilar, so what she has to do is figure out how to get from one to the other.

She pulls a bit of the Cereans' material apart, unraveling it to see the pattern. The threads are not unlike the ones she first learned to work with, twisted fibers that fall to pieces if they lose their twist, just thicker and warmer. She sets them rolling between her fingers, but can't get the tension right and ends up with something like the lumpy cord she'd created with the first lot of orbak hair. 

So this is right. This is the right track, Dats just needs to figure out what tools she needs to keep that tension. Something spinning or turning that will maintain reliable tension. 

The following few days, she tries everything she can think of - from gyroscopes to salvaged droid parts - to make something that will spin at an even rate, but stop or slow when she needs to add more hair. She mostly finds different ways to cover herself in fluff and storms out swearing several times to go sulk by the ocean and look for more kelp. Eventually Dats realizes she’s working too high-tech. Sentients have been making thread since long before they managed to put together machinery. What they would have were the basic forces around them and things like stone and wood and water. So, how does  _ that  _ change things? 

It must. It has to be the answer.

Three rocks chipped to gravel, and a pile of broken sticks later, Dats has worn frustrated sweat tracks through the fiber and dust clinging to her cheeks and gained a splitting headache, but nothing she’s tried comes even close to the result she needs.

Jannah comes after her when she stomps through the settlement again, catching her by the outskirts.

“What’s wrong?” Jannah asks, direct and kind as always.

“The orbak hair can turn into thread to make more material, I just haven’t figured out how,” Dats says, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s what we need to make the cold-weather gear. I need to work this out or we're not going to be able to...” 

She's starting to shake a little, teeth chattering, and she can't stop. This is too important. If she can't make this work, they're going to end up going out insufficiently protected. 

"I can't-" 

Dats _ knows _ the Company; they're too active to manage another cold season indoors. Some squaddie will lose patience and go on patrol without waiting for one of the sets of gear they have and get hypothermia or lose their way because their mental functions are impaired and they'll  _ die _ and it will be her failure to perform this task that causes it...

Jannah grabs her by the shoulders and squeezes and Dats gulps in air, interrupting the high-pitched noise she hasn't realized she was making. 

"Enough!" Jannah says, hands gentling as Dats comes back to herself. "Enough. It will be fine. You're not alone. We've got a whole settlement's worth of people who can help, who can offer new ideas if you're stuck. This isn't all on you, even if it's your project. Just because you took it on doesn't mean you're in it alone. We're in this together, we always are." 

Dats nods, breath calming. "Yes, sir," she manages. 

Jannah sighs and doesn't correct her. "When did you last sleep for a full rest cycle?"

Dats stares at Jannah's shoulder. "Two days ago, sir."

"If you give me your report, will you be able to sleep?"

Dats' brain has slowed down enough to be able to consider that. "Probably," she hazards. Jannah lets her go and she doesn't stagger. 

Jannah settles on a rock. "So talk me through what you do know."

She does, explaining the properties of the hair, the observations she's made about thread, and the mechanisms she's tried to use. "But the people who created this all that time ago didn't have anything like machinery to do it with. There's a way, but I can't  _ find _ it."

Jannah nods. "I agree, this project is important. I'll get the others thinking about it. You need to eat and return to a regular rest cycle so you can do something with the information once we've all discovered a solution."

"Yes, Jannah," Dats says, staring at the ground, eyes prickling hot. "I'm sorry."

Jannah pats her shoulder again. "Thank you for caring about this so much."

She nods and heads toward food and sleep.

Jannah is the leader for a reason. Dats wakes once long enough to use the latrine and eat something Trey brings her, then falls back into her bunk again and crashes again listening to the quiet sounds of Trey moving around and watering the plants he keeps in their -fab, things that are fragile or pretty or important for Sasana’s edible experiments. When she finally wakes up feeling coherent, more than a day has passed. She trudges to the mess, head down and face hot. It's weakness, the medics and officers had told her, failure to control her mind and body, getting caught up like that. She'd been treated for it a few times over the years, but the reconditioning never stuck. She'd thought that being here, being away from the First Order, might have fixed her. It hasn't, apparently. 

She eats her boiled egg and crunchy fried fish quietly, head down, but Palol sits next to her and tells her the news of the day in small, manageable, quiet observations without looking at her or asking for a response. She nods when he offers her a cup of sweet pearl pudding. It's tiny and bright yellow, like a star bursting rich in her mouth. She licks the cup clean, using her fingers to reach the last of it. Palol claps her on the back when he leaves and she appreciates it. She’ll add more blue to the next wrap she makes for him; he likes blue. She drinks a little more water - sleeping that long is dehydrating - and goes to report to Jannah. 

Gray points her toward the coast. They're sitting on a tarp with a pile of orbak hair, working a comb through it, with a cleaner pile to one side. As she passes the stables, Forten's second, Jackro, brings out another bag to drop next to them, then scoops the combed hair into one of Teo's wash buckets. Dats watches for a second, emotions roiling, but she needs to report. 

Jannah isn't hard to find. Her orbak is tethered just this side of a ridge before the cliff, dark against the sunlit green of the ground cover. Dats finds her at one skimmer winch checking both mechanism and craft over. She swings the skimmer up to dry, leaving it ready for the next scavenging run. 

"Feeling better?" Jannah calls over the rush of wind off the water. 

"Yes. I'm. Yes, better," Dats says once she's in speaking range. "I saw that you've got some of the others working on processing fiber."

Jannah nods. "You figured that part out. We know how it works. You and the mechanics get to work out the next steps." She touches Dats' shoulder. "We’re a team, a Company. We don't have to guard specializations. We can share the work. You know that."

"I know," Dats agrees, still feeling rusty. Nobody is going to replace her if she doesn't perform optimally at all times. "Did Jayelle have any ideas?"

"Let's go check in and see." Jannah retrieves her orbak and leads both of them back toward the settlement. 

Jayelle's in conference with Pingback, Geedi, and a couple of the other gearheads over a pile of mechanical pieces and some of her lumpy test cords. They're arguing, and don't even glance up when Jannah and Dats enter. Geedi twirls a stone disc, letting it dangle and spin on the end of a string. Pingback says something and Geedi smacks him, open-handed but not hard. Jayelle waves both of them down. Her braids are losing more strands of hair than usual.

"That's enough. One voice at a time or I'll bar you from the shop." She nods at a scout - Jackro's partner Sim - who gestures at the disc. Geedi hands it over. 

Sim unties the string and grabs a drill, gesturing with it at the disc. "It needs something to wind onto," ze snaps, apparently not for the first time. "Unless you think it'll be useful to make a bunch of cords the length of the drop between your arm and the ground. Get me a kriffing stick, Pingback."

Pingback grumbles, but heads out past them, nodding to Jannah as he goes. Sim takes the disc over to a workbench, pulls on a pair of goggles, and starts drilling, widening the hole through the center of the stone.

Jayelle notices Jannah and Dats then. "We have a few prototype variations ready to analyze, or will, as soon as Sim mounts a stick in that one," she says, gesturing to a table beside the door. The options there range from complex (a set of gears mounted on a wheel, with a pedal attachment), to confusing (a drawing of an orbak powered spring mechanism), to simple (another stone disc and string).

"The orbak one is probably a bad idea," Jayelle admits, "and I think Sim is right about the stone prototype, but the others show promise." 

"Gray and Jackro are working on processing, right?" Dats asks, picking up and fiddling with the wheel until she figures out which end is supposed to go up. 

"Yes, Teo's helping with the wash portion too. He volunteered for ‘anything he could do by himself.’" Jannah examines the orbak-power diagram with some amusement. 

"Simpler is better," Dats says. "Sentients without many resources worked this out before high tech was an option."

"That's the starting point we're working from," Jayelle agrees. "Pingback argued hard for the widespread availability of beasts of burden, but he's the one who gets to try convincing Forten to put an orbak on a treadmill."

"We need a demo from you of the best ways you've worked out how to make the cord, so we can replicate it and test the prototypes," Jannah says. 

Dats nods. "I can do that." That’s the easy part. It’s making a consistent gauge and making it longer that’s the problem. That’s what they’re trying to do next. There’s no demerit waiting for her because she hasn’t worked it out yet. It’s fine. “Who’s going to learn?”

Jannah makes a thoughtful noise. “Sim, Geedi, and Pingback at least. I’ll have the others who’ve been helping go process some more fiber for you. Jayelle?”

“I’ll join your crew, Dats.” Jayelle replaces her tools in their places and brushes her hands off on her hide coverall. 

Sim makes a triumphant noise and stomps back over, dropping the stone with its new axle onto the prototype table. Hands on zir hips, ze turns to Dats. “I’m green. Let’s burn.” 

Once everyone's assembled, Dats shoos them all over to benches and fusses for a second getting baskets of fiber set and ready while she collects herself. Then she takes a breath and leads them through the steps she's figured out. 

Rolling and twisting the fibers against one's leg only works so well. After a while, everyone has some kind of lumpy, misshapen length smooshed together and not unraveling too badly. It takes some swearing from Jayelle and increasingly confused muttering from Pingback. (He can at least adjust his volume, if not his tendency to chatter. He got disciplined a lot before they left. Sometimes Dats is amazed the words didn't get beaten out of him.) But they see and feel the process. 

After that, they get straight to testing. Pingback has not managed to convince Forten to lend him an orbak. Geedi gets their fingers caught in the gears of the wheel, then it catches Jayelle's cloak where she’d thrown it on the bench, then Sim's braid, and by the time Dats and Pingback manage to pry it off Sim, they've gotten about a handspan of cord out of it. As soon as the gears stop moving, it unravels into a pile of fluff. 

"No good," Jayelle observes.

Geedi scowls and wanders off to strip it down to components, pausing only to suck blood off their finger.

Jayelle feeds the end of her lumpy cord through the hole in the first stone and secures it with a pin underneath. Using that as a starter, she spins the rock with one hand. The other holds the end of the cord. As it spins, she grabs tufts of hair and tries to stick them to the end. It works, a bit. Pingback whoops excitedly, despite a shove from Sim as he elbows closer for a better look. Jayelle’s face creases up, caught between a frown of concentration and a smile of excitement.

Geedi stops frowning over their finger and slides in beside Dats. Sim sucks in a breath when Jayelle’s stone twirls its way down into the dirt. She picks it up, keeping the tension on the cord, which is still uneven, but much more consistent than even Dats’ most recent attempts. 

Jayelle sighs, but she’s grinning all the same. “Okay, Sim’s right, I don’t know what to do with it from here.”

“And that’s why you need something to wind it on!” Sim says, fingers tapping along zir own forearms.

“How will you stop it unwinding from the stick?” Dats asks.

“Maybe a hook at the end to catch it?” Jayelle says. Sim nods thoughtfully and the two of them descend on the last prototype to make improvements before testing. 

Dats wilts onto the bench, with Jayelle’s uneven, mottled grey-black, completely remarkable cord between her hands. 

When Sim’s satisfied, ze hooks the end into a whole handful of orbak hair and sets zir stone spinning gently. When the spin slows, she tugs it down, pulling more fiber into play, then spins it again. The cord forms between zir hand and the stick, like Jayelle’s had. Once there’s about half a meter, ze stops, unhooks the end and ties it onto the stick, wraps the spare length around it a few times, hooks it through the top again, and restarts the spin. In ten minutes, the small pile of hair ze’s working from is gone and Jayelle’s grabbing for Geedi’s to pass it over to Sim as well. 

“Geedi,” Dats says, “Pingback. We’re going to need to make a machine to turn cord into material.” She can feel the smile breaking out over her face. 

At the shout of victory from Sim and Jayelle as the last of the orbak hair they prepped for testing turns into cord, Dats has to drop her head to her knees and breathe for a moment. When she looks up, Sim is brandishing zir stone, a grey mass of fuzzy cord wrapped securely around its axle and cinched around the hook at the top. Pingback whoops congratulations and Geedi waves their hands in joy. It’s a start. They aren’t there yet, but they will be.

* * *

The orbak-hair-material project grows. The axle-stone process works, but it’s still slow enough that Dats and Palol have to enlist half the Company to help. Luckily it doesn’t take much concentration once someone has the knack. Every squaddie with their hands free and nothing else to do spins cord: while riding in the sledge, talking in the mess after they’ve eaten, resting in the sunslight on the training ground. 

Dats and Geedi and Pingback build a weaving frame - a simple one to start with that lets Dats turn cord into meter squares of fabric. It’s warm, insulating stuff and she sews it layered in between some of the thinner materials. The most effective is kelp for the outside, orbak hair in the middle, with thin suit lining against the skin. The result is bulky and not the easiest to move in, but it will work wonders for outer garments that shed damp and wind as well as cold. Geedi and Sim come up with a larger open-bottomed frame and weight the cords down with more rocks. Jayelle adds a rolling bar at the top, so that a single weaving can be as long as needed, and they have a tool that can turn out material that doesn’t have to be pieced as much for gear and can make larger scale thermal protection for bunks and -fabs. 

Forten has the orbak keepers sort the animals by color before brushing them, and Jackro brings Dats piles of white and grey hair that takes dye, and then they have cord and material in green and yellow and rusty red and blue. The black and dark brown hair goes into the weaving as well, and Palol claims it for trade goods. They aren’t the only settlement worried about the coming cold season. 

Once the Dats gets the cold weather gear sorted, she’s promised everyone the brightest, most colorful gear they can design. Maybe she’ll try making patterns in the weaving. Stripes shouldn’t be hard. The Company will be as different on the outside as the inside, and protected as best as she can make them.

And they will survive another season. 

**Author's Note:**

> *Dramatis Personae:*
> 
> Dats: JL-6474 - clothing, forager - ex-trooper, she/her  
> Jannah: TZ-1719 - leader, scout, mechanic - ex-trooper, she/her  
> Geedi: TZ-5583 - mechanic, scavenger, farm - ex-comms officer, they/them  
> Palol: TZ-7520 - supply, farm - ex-TIE pilot, he/him  
> Forten: JL-4410 - lead orbak keeper - ex-trooper, ze/zir  
> Teo: TZ-3330 - hunter, tanner, soap-maker - ex-trooper, he/him  
> Kester: JL-0032 - medical, forager - ex-trooper, ze/zir  
> Pingback: TZ-5585 - mechanic, scavenger, farm - ex-gunner, he/him  
> Trey: JL-6533 - scout, farm - ex-trooper, he/him  
> Sasana: TZ-8914 - cook, forager - ex-TIE pilot, she/her  
> Jayelle: JL-3621 - lead mechanic, medical backup - ex-trooper, she/her  
> Gray: TZ-1742 - trade, orbak care - ex-trooper, they/them  
> Trick: JL-3650 - trade, scout - ex-sniper, she/her  
> Jackro: JL-6548 - orbak care, medical backup - ex-trooper, she/her or they/them  
> Sim: TZ-2844 - scout, mechanic - ex-TIE pilot, ze/zir  
> And asstd. squad members, other settlers, and orbaks.


End file.
